The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (96 page)

'It wasn't necessary,' de Taillebourg said.

The Lord of Roncelets prodded Thomas with a mailed foot. 'You say the bastard's an English archer?' 'He is.'

'Then cut off his bow fingers,' Roncelets said savagely. 'I cannot shed blood,' de Taillebourg said.

'By God, I can.' Roncelets pulled a knife from his belt.

'He is my charge!' de Taillebourg snapped. He is in God's hands and you will not touch him. You will not shed his blood!'

'This is my castle, priest,' Roncelets growled.

'And your soul is in my hands,' de Taillebourg retorted.

'He's an archer! An English archer! He came here to snatch the Chenier boy! That's my business!'

'His fingers have been shattered by the vice,' de Taillebourg said, 'so he's an archer no longer.'

Roncelets was placated by that news. He prodded Thomas again. 'He's a piece of piss, priest, that's what he is. A piece of feeble piss.' He spat on Thomas, not because he hated Thomas in particular, but because he detested all archers who had dethroned the knight from his rightful place as king of the battlefield. 'What will you do with him?' he asked.

'Pray for his soul,' de Taillebourg said curtly and when the Lord of Roncelets was gone he did exactly that. It was evident he had finished his questioning for he produced a small vial of holy oil and he gave Thomas the final rites of the church, touching the oil to his brow and to his burned breast and then he said the prayers for the dying. 'Sand me, Domine,' de Taillebourg intoned, his fingers gentle on Thomas's brow, 'quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea.' Heal me, Lord, for my bones are twisted with pain. And when that was said and done Thomas was carried down the castle stairs into a dungeon sunk into a pit in the rock crag on which the Guepier was built. The floor was the bare black stone, as damp as it was cold. His manacles were removed as he was locked in the cell and he thought he must go mad for his body was all pain and his fingers were shattered and he was no longer an archer for how could he draw a bow with broken hands? Then the fever came and he wept as he shivered and sweated and at night, when he was half sleeping, he gibbered in his nightmares; and he wept again when he woke for he had not endured the torture, but had told de Taillebourg everything. He was a failure, lost in the dark, dying.

Then, one day, he did not know how many days it was since he had been taken down to the Guepier's cellars, de Taillebourg's two servants came and fetched him. They put a rough woollen shirt on him, pulled dirty woollen breeches over his soiled legs and then they carried him up to the castle yard and threw him into the back of an empty dung cart. The tower's gate creaked open and, accompanied by a score of men-at-arms in the Lord of Roncelets's livery and dazzled by the pale sun light, Thomas left the Guepier. He was hardly aware of what was happening, he just lay on the dirty boards, hunched in pain, the stink of the cart's usual cargo sour in his nostrils, wanting to die. The fever had not gone and he was shaking with weakness. 'Where are you taking me?' he asked, but no one answered; maybe no one even heard him for his voice was so feeble. It rained. The cart rumbled northwards and the villagers crossed themselves and Thomas drifted in and out of a stupor. He thought he was dying and he supposed they were taking him to the graveyard and he tried to call out to the cart's driver that he still lived, but instead it was Brother Germain 1vho answered him in a querulous voice, saying he should have left the book with him in Caen. 'It's your own fault,' the old monk said and Thomas decided he was dreaming.

He was next aware of a trumpet calling. The cart had stopped and he heard the flapping of cloth and looked up and saw that one of the horsemen was waving a white banner. Thomas wondered if it was his winding sheet. They wrapped a baby when it came into the world and they wrapped a corpse when it went out and he sobbed because he did not want to be buried, and then he heard English voices and he knew he was dreaming as strong hands lifted him from the remnants of dung. He wanted to scream, but he was too weak, and then all sense left him and he was unconscious.

When he woke it was dark and he was in another

cart, a clean one this time, and there were blankets over him and a straw mattress beneath him. The cart had a leather cover on wooden half-hoops to keep out the rain and sunlight. 'Will you bury me now?' Thomas asked.

'You're talking nonsense,' a man said and Thomas recognized Robbie's voice.

'Robbie?'

'Aye, it's me.'

'Robbie?'

'You poor bastard,' Robbie said and stroked Thomas's forehead. 'You poor, poor bastard.'

'Where am I?'

'You're going home, Thomas,' Robbie said, 'you're going home.'

To La Roche-Derrien.

He had been ransomed. A week after his disappearance and two days after the rest of the raiding party had returned to La Roche-Derrien a messenger had come to the garrison under a flag of truce. He brought a letter from Bernard de Taillebourg that was addressed to Sir William Skeat. Surrender Father Ralph's book, the letter said, and Thomas of Hookton will be delivered back to his friends. Will Skeat had the message translated and read to him, but he knew nothing of any book so he asked Sir Guillaume if he had any idea what the priest wanted and Sir Guillaume spoke to Robbie who, in turn, talked to Jeanette and next day an answer went back to Roncelets.

Then there was a fortnight's delay because Brother Germain had to be fetched from Normandy to Rennes.

De Taillebourg insisted on that precaution because Brother Germain had seen the book and he could con-firm that what was exchanged for Thomas was indeed Father Ralph's notebook.

'And so it was,' Robbie said.

Thomas stared up at the ceiling. He vaguely felt it had been wrong to exchange him for the book, even if he was grateful to be alive, to be home and among his friends.

'It was the right book,' Robbie went on with indecent relish, 'but we added some stuff to it.' He grinned at Thomas. 'We copied it all out first, of course, and then we added some rubbish to mislead them. To confuse them, see? And that shrivelled old monk never noticed. He just pawed at the book like a starving dog given a bone.'

Thomas shuddered. He felt as if he had been stripped of pride, strength and even manhood. He had been utterly humiliated, reduced to a shivering, whining, twitching thing. Tears ran down his face though he made no sound. His hands hurt, his body hurt, everything hurt. He did not even know where he was, only that he had been brought back to La Roche-Derrien and carried up a steep flight of stairs to this small chamber under a roof's steep rafters where the walls were roughly plastered and a crucifix hung at the head of the bed. A window screened with opaque horn let in a dirty brown light.

Robbie went on telling him about the false entries they had added to Father Ralph's book. It had been his idea, he said, and Jeanette had copied out the book first, but after that Robbie had let his imagination run wild. 'I put some of it in Scots,' he boasted, 'how the Grail is really in Scotland. Have the bastards searching the heather, eh?' He laughed, but could see that Thomas was not listening. He went on talking anyway, and then another person came into the room and wiped the tears from Thomas's face. It was Jeanette.

'Thomas?' she asked, 'Thomas?'

He wanted to tell her that he had seen and spoken to her son, but he could not find the words. Guy Vexille had said Thomas would want to die while he was being tortured and that had been true, but Thomas was sur-prised to find it was still true. Take a man's pride, he thought, and you leave him with nothing. The worst memory was not the pain, nor the humiliation of begging for the pain to stop, but the gratitude he had felt towards de Taillebourg when the pain did stop. That was the most shameful thing of all.

'Thomas?' Jeanette asked again. She knelt by the bed and stroked his face. 'It's all right,' she said softly, 'you're safe now. This is my house. No one will hurt you here.'

'I might,' a new voice said and Thomas shook with fear, then turned to see that it was Mordecai who had spoken. Mordecai? The old doctor was supposed some-where in the «arm south. 'I might have to reset your finger and toe bones,' the doctor said, 'and that will be painful.' He put his bag on the floor. 'Hello, Thomas. I do hate boats. We waited for the new sail and then when they'd finished sewing it up they decided there wasn't enough caulking between the planks and when that was corrected they decided the rigging needed work and so the wretched boat is still sitting there. Sailors! All they ever do is talk about going to sea. Still, I shouldn't complain, it gave me the time to concoct some new material for your father's notebook and I rather enjoyed doing that! Now I hear you need me. My dear Thomas, what have they done to you?'

'Hurt me,' Thomas said and they were the first words he had spoken since he had come to Jeanette's house.

'Then we must mend you,' Mordecai said very calmly. He peeled the blanket back from Thomas's scarred body and, though Jeanette flinched, Mordecai just smiled. 'I've seen worse come from the Dominicans,' he said, 'much worse.'

So Thomas was again tended by Mordecai and time was measured by the clouds passing beyond the opaque window and the sun climbing ever higher in the sky and the noise of birds plucking straw from the thatch to make their nests. There were two days of awful pain when Mordecai brought a bone-setter to rebreak and splint Thomas's fingers and toes, but that pain went after a week and the burns on his body healed and the fever passed. Day after day Mordecai peered at his urine and declared it was clearing. 'You have the strength of an ox, young Thomas.'

'I have the stupidity of one,' Thomas said.

'Just brashness,' Mordecai said, 'just youth and brashness.'

'When they . . .' Thomas began and flinched from remembering what de Taillebourg had done. 'When they talked to me,' he said instead, 'I told them you had seen the notebook.'

'They can't have liked that,' Mordecai said. He had taken a spool of cord from a pocket of his gown and now looped one end of the line around a spur of wood that protruded from an untrimmed rafter. 'They can't have liked the thought of a Jew being curious about the Grail. They doubtless thought I wanted to use it as a pisspot?'

Thomas, despite the impiety, smiled. 'I'm sorry, Mordecai.'

'For telling them about me? What choice did you have? Men always talk under torture, Thomas, that is why torture is so useful. It is why torture will be used so long as the sun goes on circling the earth. And you think I am in more danger now than I was? I'm Jewish, Thomas, Jewish. Now, what do I do with this?' He was speaking of the cord, which now hung from the rafter and which he evidently wished to attach to the floor, but there was no obvious anchor point.

'What is it?' Thomas asked.

'A remedy,' Mordecai said, staring helplessly at the cord, then at the floor. 'I was ever unpractical with matters like this. A hammer and nail, you think?'

'A staple.' Thomas suggested.

Jeanette's idiot servant boy was sent out with careful instructions and managed to find the staple that Mordecai asked Thomas to hammer into the floorboard, but Thomas held up his crooked right hand with its fingers bent like claws and said he could not do it, so Mordecai clumsily banged the staple in himself and then tightened the cord and tied it off so that it stretched taut from floor to ceiling. '\'hat you must do,' he said, admiring his handiwork, 'is pluck it like a bowcord.'

'I can't,' Thomas said in panic, holding up his crooked hands again.

'What are you?' Mordecai asked.

'What am I?'

'Ignore the specious answers. I know you're an Englishman and I assume you're a Christian, but what are you?'

'I was an archer,' Thomas said bitterly.

'And you still are,' Mordecai said harshly, 'and if you are not an archer then you are nothing. So pluck that cord! And keep on plucking it until your fingers can close on it. Practise. Practise. What else do you have to do with your time?'

So Thomas practised and after a week he could tighten two fingers opposite the thumb and make the cord reverberate like a harp string, and after another week he could bend the fingers of both hands about the cord and he plucked it so vigorously that it finally broke under the strain. His strength was coming back and the burns had healed to leave puckered welts where the poker had scored his skin, but the wounds in his memory did not heal. He would not talk of what had been done to him for he did not want to remember it, instead he practised plucking the cord until it snapped and then he learned to grip a quarterstaff and fought mock battles in the house yard with Robbie. And, as the days had lengthened out of winter, he went for walks beyond the town. There was a windmill on a slight hill that lay not far from the town's eastern gate and at first he could hardly manage the climb because his toes had been broken in the vice and his feet felt like unyielding lumps, but by the time April had filled the meadows with cowslips he was walking confidently. Will Skeat often went with him and though the older man never said much his company was easy. If he did talk it was to grumble about the weather or complain because the food was strange or, more likely, because he had heard nothing from the Earl of Northampton.

'You think we should write to his lordship again, Tom?'

'Maybe the first letter didn't reach him?'

'I never did like things written down,' Skeat said, 'it ain't natural. Can you write to him?'